As known in the art, positive displacement pumps produce negative energies that severely age and damage the pump components as well as the system the pump is utilizing. In an effort to subdue these energies, gas-charged pulsation dampeners utilize the compressibility of gas to transfer the energy from the media being pumped. This is done through installing a rubber diaphragm inside a pulsation dampener and filling it with gas, specifically nitrogen gas. The inherent problem with this design is the failure of the diaphragm, which releases the compressible gas, leaving the pulsation dampener completely ineffective. As a result of this failure, a worker has to shut down the pump operations for maintenance of the pulsation dampener.
As discussed above, such gas-charged diaphragms have two major problems associated with their operations, the first problem is that the pre-charge needs to be adjusted to operational pressure and once diaphragm fails, the charge of gas is released and the pulsation dampener doesn't work effectively. Problems with pre-charge: if the pre-charge of gas is too high, the dampener will self-seal and doesn't work. If the pre-charge of gas is too low, the gas is compressed until it can no longer compress and without compression, it doesn't work. The second problem is with the diaphragm failure, where after the failure, all of the compressible gas escapes and the dampener doesn't work without compressible gas.
Hence, there is a long felt but unresolved need for a dampening apparatus which utilizes a non-pressurized mechanism to enable dampening of a pulsating fluid. Here, since the dampening apparatus is not retaining pressure, the life of the apparatus is enhanced, and there is no sudden loss of the compressible gas allowing for extreme operational times without shut down for maintenance and repair.